Artspeaking topic
The columns of Greek temples are not actually straight; they bulge slightly in the middle. The eye reads a perfectly straight column as sagging inward, so to look flawless they were deliberately made flawed. Do you have to distort reality to look true to the human eye?
— entasis and the optical corrections of the Parthenon
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- If a painter colors the sky exactly the blue they see, the painting looks dead. You have to lie a little, not for realism but for believability. Why does an exact copy of reality feel unreal to us?
- What role did the invention of the camera and the arrival of paint in tubes play in the birth of Impressionism?
- Thirty thousand years ago, cave dwellers with no training at all drew horses so alive that today's artists are still amazed. There was no writing and there were no cities, but there was art. Why did humans choose to paint on walls instead of just filling their stomachs?
- How does Goya's 'Saturn Devouring His Son' embody the bleakness of his 'Black Paintings' period and the destructiveness of power?
- The mirror, the painter, and the viewer in Velázquez's 'Las Meninas': why is this composition one of the most debated scenes in the history of painting?